(Update from Janie: Thank you so much for reading my stories and for the insightful responses you have emailed to me these past two years. I’m sorry I haven't been able to respond to every email but I do appreciate them very much. I have been intent on getting my book finished this spring and summer, hence the dearth of blogs of late! I am now on the hunt for an agent and publisher, so wish me luck!)

I have always loved the 'Polyptych of the Misericordia’ painted by Piero della Francesca over a period of seventeen years and finished in 1462. The painting hangs in a museum in the little Italian town of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, where della Francesca was born. The central panel (above) is of the Madonna della Misericordia protecting the townspeople under her magnificent cloak.

The expression on the Madonna’s face has always intrigued me. What is she feeling? Is it serenity, compassion, responsibility, neutrality, or something else? I have come to understand that my fascination over many years with her facial expression is my desire to make sense of my own feelings about choosing a life of caring for others.

I hold the image of the people I care about being tucked inside my cloak, and I want to do more for them, to protect them, keep them safe from the harms of the world, of cancer with its horrible treatments, and the heartaches of having to live a life given, not chosen.

Recently, I went to see Rima at the chemotherapy unit of the B.C. Cancer Centre, a woman I have known for seven years, since she first attended one of our retreats after a diagnosis in 2009 of metastatic breast cancer, at the age of 34. She immigrated to Canada from Trinidad at the age of 24 to start a new life full of promise and hope.

When I arrived, Rima was tucked into the chemotherapy chair, her fleecy turquoise toque pulled well down over her ears, and a blanket tucked around her legs. I had seen her bald before but not for a long time. Her face seemed even more accessible without her huge shock of gorgeous, long wavy, shiny black hair.

“Hey Janie. So nice to see you. The new chemo is about to start in a couple of minutes.” She reached her arm out from under the blanket for a hug.

Rima’s warmth has always come at me like a tropical breeze, her cloak always wide open to receive me, even when new drugs are about to enter her bloodstream, even exhausted at the Finish Line of the Whistler Gran Fondo, after she had cycled, not long after chemotherapy, up the mountains from Squamish, with her 'fuck cancer' sign pinned to the back of her saddle, as she waited for me to cross the Finish. “You did it,” she congratulated, as she hugged me.

Within a minute of the chemo infusion, Rima’s eyes started to roll back and she grabbed at the neck of her shirt, gasping for air. “I can’t breathe,” she whispered, her wide eyes filled with terror. I knew from my years as a chemotherapy nurse that Rima was having an allergic reaction so I moved closer and grabbed her hand. “You’re okay,” I said. “The nurse has just given you some Benadryl. It will settle soon. Just keep your eyes on mine, okay?

Rima’s body writhed and convulsed as it tried to reject the drug that was supposed to help her slow down the progression of her liver cancer. My cloak stretched as wide as I could make it, trying to protect and comfort this woman who had been tucked inside my heart from the moment I met her.

Looking into Rima's eyes, I remember thinking many thoughts as the drug tried to swallow her up: that the will of her body and mind to live is so incredibly strong; that her love of life surpasses the desire to opt out when things get too hard; that cancer has required so much from her; that our modern-day treatments can be harsh; that death is not always the worst thing; that she will accept death when her time comes; that I love her and don't want her to suffer, nor do I want her to die; that we both had held protective cloaks around one another over the years, which is what you do when you deeply care.

I knew then that the expression on the Madonna’s face was one of equanimity, a deep, steady intimacy with the ways things are, beyond preference. The Madonna holds a calm and unencumbered space for all the people who need her shelter. We can all do that for each other, if we choose to.

Within five minutes, a time infused with eternity, the drug reaction passed. Rima looked at me with immense kindness and the relief that passed between us was palpable.

‘Thank you,” she said. “Did you ever choose the right moment to come?” Her smile was as wide as ever.

I nodded, kissed her on her clammy cheek, told her I loved her, and left to get back to work where someone else was waiting.

"There is a presence who walks the road of life with you. This presence accompanies your every moment. It shadows your every thought and feeling. On your own, or with others, it is always there with you. When you were born it came out of the womb with you, but with the excitement at your arrival, nobody noticed it. Though this presence surrounds you, you may still be blind to its companionship. The name of this presence is death."

(From: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue, p. 199)

For many years, I have been intrigued by this passage by John O’Donohue. I find it comforting to think that life and death are deeply entwined with one another, surrounding me, and inside me. I have used the passage frequently as a prompt for writing, with people who are interested in exploring their personal relationship with their own deaths.

In January 2017, the Callanish team was invited to lead a workshop for forty-five people at Commonweal in Bolinas, California, (www.commonweal.org), the home of the Cancer Help Program under the leadership of Michael Lerner. The topic for exploration was for each of us to more deeply understand our lifelong companionship with death. The first part of the exploration was to write a letter to death.

Dear Death….this is what I want to say to you….Dear Death….this is how I feel about you…Dear Death…this is what I have held against you……Dear Death.

Participants were encouraged to write freely without pause.

Terri Mason who attended a cancer retreat at Commonweal after she was diagnosed with cancer ten years ago came to our death and dying workshop in January. She told me that she has been afraid of death since she was a young child.

I was deeply touched by the intimacy in the ‘Dear Death’ letter that Terri wrote and then read aloud to the group, and I asked her if I could share her writing in my blog. She told me that during the writing process she had struggled to articulate what she wanted to write in her letter to death, until a voice inside her told her that death wanted to write the letter to her. This is what she wrote:

Letter from Death to Terri

Dear Terri,

I do hear you and I will speak in your language so you can hear me even if you can't understand.

It is true that I have always been your companion. I was so dear to you that when you were born, when you first came into light, you held your breath for as long as possible.

The pull of the living was strong, so strong you could feel it. You felt the pull of your mother's love, though she was drugged, and the pull of all who were in the room.

I let you go away from me into life because I knew you were loved. I did not want to let you go any more than you wanted to leave me. I knew you would return to me one day.

One day we will reclaim each other. I know how strongly you resist this. I know how you will cling to life because I know how you clung to me.

We will be together again.

When I asked Terri how she felt about the letter from death, she wrote this to me in an e-mail, “It was a big surprise and reassuring to read what death wrote to me. I know it has changed my relationship to death though I can't tell you exactly how. I'm not trying to figure it out, just trying to live into it.”

Bright yellow gorse with its coconut fragrance lined the footpath as we pushed against the wind. He wore his old black anorak and tweed cap, and his wellington boots smeared with mud from the garden. Each time I visited we hiked the five miles over the cliff to Sandyhills, in the southwest corner of Scotland, pausing at Castle Point for a few minutes to catch our breath, as we always did, to follow the arrows carved in the stone marker with our eyes, out into the steel grey sea, towards Canada, my home of the past twelve years. Everyone said that Dad and I were “two-of-a-kind.” We’d always had a relationship not dependent on words. We knew how each other felt without needing to talk about it. And that day in 1996, just after his sixty-seventh birthday and a year after retirement was no different. We communicated in silence as we walked.

Dad was diagnosed with a Stage IV brain tumour three months after that visit. Mum called right after they got the news. Perhaps they thought I'd know what to do since I had worked as an oncology nurse for fifteen years by then. However, for me, my career dissolved during that phone conversation. I was a daughter, not a nurse then, and continuing to work with other people with cancer while my father was dying made no sense. I took leave and planned a trip to Scotland, where I spent most of the next thirteen weeks.

Sudden memory loss had taken him to his family doctor. The scan showed a large inoperable brain tumour. His oncologist said treating a glioblastoma could give him three to six months more time but the side effects would only strip him of his dignity for the time he had left. No surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation meant a sure death in a shorter time-frame, but also the hope of a dignified one.

“I have a brain tumour, deep-seated, in the centre of my brain. Is that right?” Dad asked me over dinner, the first evening I arrived.

“You do, Dad. It’s a Stage IV brain tumour, called a glioblastoma.”

“I have a deep-seated brain tumour, don’t I? Will it kill me?” His short-term memory loss made it hard for him to retain information.

“Yes, it will, Dad. The oncologist told you at your first appointment that you’ll probably only live three or four months.” I heard the quiver in my voice as my words landed with a thud into a part of his brain that still functioned.

“If I’m going to die then no monks’ urine for me," he said with a wink. That’s what people do, don’t they, when they get cancer? They travel the world looking for cures. I’m not that kind of man. I’ve had a good life and I’ll just get on with this. It’ll be harder on your Mum.” He looked at me and for the first time I saw the sadness of the leaving in his eyes.

Dad spent only one night of the next thirteen weeks in hospital. All the rest of his nights were spent at home, in his own bed. We checked him into the neurosurgery ward to have the brain biopsy that would confirm what the brain scan showed. I was relieved that the diagnosis wouldn’t be made purely on the basis of technology; the biopsy would allow us to see the cancer with the naked eye. The nurse showed us to his bed, one of four in the room, and Mum pulled the flimsy curtain closed for privacy. He looked older than he had at home, in pale blue hospital pajamas with a button missing midway down. He perched on top of crisp white sheets, covering the plastic-covered mattress, which crinkled every time he moved. He had kept his socks on. Bare feet against the cold sheets, too much vulnerability perhaps.

“See you tomorrow, darling,” Mum whispered, then kissed him lightly on the lips. We bid a hasty farewell, guilty in our abandonment.

On December 29th this year, it will be twenty years since Dad died. The family will gather in Scotland from the four corners of the earth, and we will hike the cliff path to Sandyhills and push into the wind and inhale the steely grey sea air, in his honour. The grandchildren he never met will walk too and we will tell them stories about how their Grandpa loved the sea, and golf, and the poems of John Donne, and about how he dreamed of living with his wife and four children in a lighthouse, retreating from the fast pace of the world, his longing, not ours. I will remember the man whom I was told stood by the airport runway long after my first flight had departed for Canada when I was twenty-six, and the man who wrote letters to me, in navy blue ink from his fountain pen, every Sunday evening, tucking them into the air-mail envelope alongside my mother’s.

I know I was one of the lucky ones, blessed with a good, good father for thirty-eight years.